Send Me Their Souls (Bring Me Their Hearts #3) - Sara Wolf Page 0,99
of the Black Archives’ mess hall. “With a permanent shit-eating grin on your face?”
I grin even wider and bat my eyelashes at him across the table. “I wouldn’t know.”
Malachite rolls his eyes and looks at Lucien. “You’ve created a monster.”
“I can hardly claim to take credit.” Lucien smiles contentedly into his water glass. “When she’s worked so hard on it herself.”
His black-glass eyes catch mine over the candlelight, knowing and full of himself and I can’t stand it one second more and neither can he, apparently, because we both stand and dump our trays with some muttered excuse to Malachite. The halls that were buzzing an hour ago are now empty, everyone at dinner, but an unfortunate (or should I say fortunate?) silver-robed polymath rounds the corner and catches Lucien pressing me against the wall. Nothing lewd, of course. Just simple kisses. All over my body.
I watch the polymath round the hall corner, then murmur breathlessly down at Lucien, who’s currently thoroughly engaged with my collarbone.
“We could—we could find a room, you know. A broom closet, even.”
He rumbles his assent against my skin. “Forgive me my impatience.”
“Forgiven,” I tease, pulling him by the hand. “But not forgotten.”
There’s a giddy urgency to it all this time. And the next. And the next after that. The novels in Nightsinger’s library never spoke of the intricacies of it—the way you learn someone’s body, freckle by freckle and line by line and scent by scent. They never spoke of how different and yet the same people are in their love, in their wants and needs and lusts. The novels never warned me of the sheer glow, the incredible feeling of an empty mind and a full heart.
We’ve been forbidden to each other for so long that being together feels like a dream. We relish in each and every moment, and a day passes like this, wrapped in kissing and holding and just lying, just being with each other. Someone will find us if they need us, but we try so hard to pretend the world doesn’t exist for just this short time. And it works. He knows exactly how to touch me, and where, and when, and part of me faintly realizes that’s probably his handy little skinreading ability. Used for good this time. Oh so good.
But reality always finds a way in. It needles at first, piercing tiny holes in our joy through our conversations afterward—me tracing the gorgeous planes of his stomach and listening to him worry. About Vetris, about Varia, about the war, about everything.
And then, it punctures with an arrow.
I’m brushing the dark hair off his neck, kissing a line down his spine when I reach for his hand. The unmoving one. I miss, but my eyes are on his back, so it’s understandable. I flounder around for his hand again, feeling for it everywhere, but it’s not there. My fingers follow the line of his arm, his elbow, knowing it will lead me to his hand. Because it has to.
Except it doesn’t.
I feel down to his wrist, but that’s it. There’s nothing after that. Just air. I recoil at the smooth stub, the lack of fingers and palm and—and anything. I thought he—I thought it was there! It was, wasn’t it? It didn’t work, but it was there…
“Y-You—” I stammer. Lucien straightens instantly on the cot, his expression taut as he looks up at me. With one dark eye. The other socket is empty, perfectly smooth just like the stub where his hand should be. Not wound-smooth, not scar-tissue smooth. Just…smooth. Like the skin’s been unnaturally sanded down to an inhumanly perfect flatness.
“Godsdamnit,” Lucien breathes softly. He tilts his head to shade his missing eye with his bangs, cradling his missing hand with his other. “I didn’t want you to see this.”
“I thought they—they just stopped working.” My voice cracks. “But have you been hiding this? The whole time?” I swallow nails. “Were they always gone?”
The prince won’t look at me, his one eye thin and entirely focused on the far wall.
“Lucien, please,” I beg, reaching for his other hand and bringing it to my unheart. “Please talk to me.”
He swallows too, our throats mirror images, mirror-bruised with the ghosts of lingering kisses, of our love, and he nods slowly.
“Yes. I did the magic. Overdid it. And they just…disappeared. But I knew if you saw that, you’d never tolerate me using magic again.”
“You hid it,” I finish for him. He nods again, a flinch to it this time.